The other evening Connie Chung on CNN interviewed two Iraqi women living
in the U.S. One hoped for peace, the other wanted the U.S. military to
unseat Saddam Hussein — thinking, I
suppose, that whoever takes his place will be a kind, benevolent statesman
(like all the other kind, benevolent leaders of the world).

The woman who wanted war maintained that Hussein would never disarm
voluntarily. I waited in vain, as I so often do, for the interviewer to ask
the obvious question:

Why should Saddam Hussein disarm, when no other country is disarming?

This prompted me to wonder how many times I've watched an interview and
waited for an obvious question to be asked —
only to see the interviewer ignore the obvious and continue with his
scripted questions.

I could think of quite a few examples. Here are those concerning Iraq
that come to mind now. . . .

LiberatingtheIraqis

Assertion: The Iraqi people will be far better off after we unseat
Saddam Hussein.

Assertion: Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. You can't
allow such a dictator to have such weapons.

Question: If that's the case, why didn't the American government threaten Leonid
Brezhnev of the Soviet Union the way it's threatening Saddam Hussein
now?

Dealing with Dictators

Assertion: You can't do business with dictators.

Question: Then why is George Bush enlisting the support of dictators
in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Pakistan, and other countries to make
war against Iraq?

War Crimes

Assertion: When the war is over, Saddam Hussein must be prosecuted
for war crimes.

Question: Since the war hasn't even started yet, how can he be
accused of war crimes already?

Revenge

Assertion: Saddam Hussein even tried to assassinate President Bush's
father. Our national honor demands that we unseat this evil man.

Question: Are you aware of what happened when the Austrian government
tried to avenge the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by the Serbs in
1914? The world was plunged into World War I
— a holocaust that caused the deaths
of millions of innocent people. How do you know that won't happen in the
current situation?

TheEvidence

Assertion: President Bush is right, but he hasn't made his case to
the American people. He needs to make the evidence against Hussein
public.

Question: Since President Bush has been claiming for over a year to
have evidence that he hasn't revealed, why are you so sure there is
any evidence?

Trusting the Untrustworthy

Assertion: I trust my President and my government.

Question: After the Gulf War, it turned out that most of the reasons
given for going to war had been false —
no Iraqi troops massed on the Saudi Arabia border, no babies ripped from
incubators by Iraqi troops in Kuwaiti hospitals. Most of the same people
who were in charge then are in the current administration. Why should we
trust them again?

Chemical & Biological Weapons

Assertion: We know Saddam Hussein used chemical and biological
weapons during the war against Iran.

Question: Then why did the Reagan administration support him so
wholeheartedly in that war?

Proving a Negative

Assertion: We've waited for two years for Saddam Hussein to come
clean. It's obvious he's not going to. We should go into Iraq, remove
him, and destroy the weapons.

Question: But suppose he doesn't have such weapons. How can he
prove this when whatever he says is branded a lie by George Bush? Given
what's happened so far, we can assume that even if Hussein said, "I give
up; here are my weapons," George Bush would claim Hussein is still
lying, is still hiding more weapons, and must be disarmed by force. So
how can Hussein possibly satisfy George Bush?

Sacrifice

Assertion: We must all make some sacrifices for security in this
awful War against Terrorism.

Question: What sacrifices are you making?

Whom Should We Trust?

We know that politicians lie. They've lied to us about Social Security,
about the projected costs of Medicare, about surpluses that never existed,
about the Gulf War, about enough matters to fill an encyclopedia.

The fact that we're now talking about national security shouldn't cause
us to have more faith in government and politicians. Quite the contrary: because it's our lives that are at stake, we should be more skeptical
then ever.

Unfortunately, the press — who should
be asking the skeptical questions for us —
is little more than an adjunct of the government, accepting political
pronouncements as gospel.

That leaves it up to us. We must be vigilant, assertive in demanding
answers — and sometimes noisy.